Case Turns iPhone Into Universal Remote While Charging It

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Case Turns iPhone Into Universal Remote While Charging It

You would think that turning the iPhone into a universal remote control would be easy, but it turns out it's not: We've seen a couple of unimpressive attempts from developers. FastMac and Umee's solution looks like it might work though.

Dubbed iV Plus, the gadget consists of an iPhone case with an integrated battery and a built-in infrared transmitter, which communicates with an app to control your home entertainment products. The idea is such: After a long day of work, you can plop down in front of the couch, pop your iPhone in the case and charge the handset while using it as a remote to control your TV, your stereo or whatever else is in your living room. And if you're OK with carrying your iPhone around in a chunky case, there's a bonus: It actually includes a LED flash for snapping photos.

Even more interesting is Umee's design of the app. You can select remote control codes based on manufacturer and types of devices in your living room. From there on, you can actually customize the remote control buttons, adding or removing whatever ones you wish. So say for instance you only use five buttons on your Comcast cable box remote: the power, select, guide, page-up and page-down buttons, for example. You can delete all the junk and keep those buttons you actually use.

The iV Plus sounds promising, because past universal remote apps we've seen have failed to create an intuitive user interface to comfortably control your living room gadgets, rendering the product impractical.

We tried a demo of the iV Plus at Macworld Expo last week, and it was only working with television sets at the time. We're looking forward to trying the iV Plus when a full version is available. Due for release in the second quarter of 2010, the case will cost $130 and the app will be free.